Seagate joins the consumer SSD race

At the launch of the first SSDs in 2008, many people wondered who the big players would be in five year’s time. If you guessed Seagate, Samsung, Western Digital and Toshiba, only one of those was the right answer – until now.

Seagate, one of the leading mechanical hard drive manufacturers, has been making SSDs for the enterprise space for some time but has never delved into consumer products. We’ve seen hybrid drives form the company before, but never an actual SSD. Western Digital is also still dabbling in hybrid drives, likely as a result of not wanting to stretch themselves too thin supporting HDDs and SSDs at the same time.

Samsung sold off its HDD manufacturing arm to Seagate in December 2011, which left the company open to pursuing other markets and new products. The latest in their lineup, the 840 and 840 Pro, regularly steals the top spots for the performance crown in reviews and is going toe-to-toe with Crucial, Corsair, Intel and OCZ in a fiercely competitive, price-dependent market.

Seagate's 600 family is good value for money

Seagate SSD 600 240GB PCB back

Seagate SSD 600 240GB PCB

Seagate SSD 600 specs

Seagate SSD 600 Pro specs

Seagate now joins the fray with the 600 and 600 Pro family. The 600 series is destined for the consumer market, using features gleaned from its enterprise products to distinguish itself from the competition. Like Corsair’s new Neutron family, it uses a controller designed by Link_A_Media Devices, a stalwart in the enterprise SSD market that produces NAND controllers for a wide range of products.

The 600 Pro is aimed at small-to-medium businesses who need speed and reliability as well as good sequential write endurance levels. The 600 Pro, says Seagate, is optimised for high write loads and is perfect for hosting databases. The 600 Pro also comes with dual SAS ports and some extra protection measures, like more capacitors on the board to prevent data loss while the drive’s controller is still writing information to the NAND cells.

The 600 series will offer 7mm and 5mm-high drives (great for Ultrabooks) and both lines will offer 120GB, 240GB and 480GB of available storage. The 600 Pro will only come in 7mm height form factors, but will offer several storage sizes, ranging from 100GB to 480GB.

Seagate has not announced pricing or availability but does say that the 600 and 600 Pro drives will be priced in line with competing products. Reviews of the new drives have been positive with no drawbacks thus far.